


Working with a Wolverine

by cruelest_month



Series: Wolverines and Other Occupational Hazards [1]
Category: Avengers (Comic), Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel 616, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:03:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruelest_month/pseuds/cruelest_month
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For an Avenger, teamwork is usually just a lot of work, but sometimes it can be quite enjoyable too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Working with a Wolverine

By the time they’d done a shitty job stitching up his side wound, bandaged his shoulder, and then left him tied up in the far corner of the dingiest sorriest-looking excuse for an evil hangout, Tony was positive this particular Thursday had been the worst Thursday ever. And, oddly enough, Thor hadn’t caused any of his problems. The person Tony was personally blaming for most of it had, actually, been trying to do the right thing. 

Steve would rub it in later because he had said about eighteen times that he didn’t want Logan on the team. Logan who was a bad team player –worse than Tony if such a thing were possible—and a loose cannon. Tony had argued that mostly Logan was a hick with superpowers. With the right training and adult supervision, he assured Steve, the mutant would eventually be useful. Somehow. It was sort of like asking to be allowed to keep a rabid dog. Deep down, Tony knew that. Steve knew it too, but ultimately he just sighed and agreed. 

The biggest issue with the X-man was that he lacked a lot of discipline, strategy and subtlety. Tony decided this was because Logan didn’t have enough brain cells to know when to be nervous. Like his namesake, Wolverine picked fights with anyone who looked at him the wrong way and didn’t seem to realize that maybe that wasn’t a very effective strategy. It must have worked on solo missions, but it wasn’t really a good way to handle combat situations when you were working with four other people. Particularly when you didn’t give said teammates a heads up, and they lacked the magic ability to heal on the spot from most wounds.

Coming up against a villain with something capable of penetrating the gold titanium alloy that composed the Iron Man suit was only a matter of time, but the timing could have been much better. The fact that the timing sucked was one hundred and fifty percent Logan’s fault. The math was flawed, but the logic sure as hell wasn’t.

Tony had propped himself up against a wall just around the bend from most of the action. There he tried to check the wound and pulled off one of his gauntlets. The others kept fighting and he fired his one remaining repulsor several times, but he wasn’t going to be much good if he didn’t apply pressure to the sizable gash just under his ribs. 

He could have used the arc reactor itself to defend the others, but it was hard to focus and this was pretty much the making of his first serious battle scar. It was sort of unbearable and he wasn’t sure what had been on the weapon that caused it. Some kind of acid. Something painful. 

Anyway, he wasn’t going to get much use out of the suit so Tony decided to start on that. He got the helmet up and out of the way first before pausing to assess the damage. He still was trying to figure out what the hell he was going to ultimately do about his injury when Logan pretty much pinned him to the wall.

He glared at the other man as Logan ripped most of the suit off in chucks and tugged other sections out of the way, sniffing at the wound before smirking as he looked up. Any other time, any other place, and Tony would have found it to be sort of exciting. Maybe a little sexy. Costly, but hey. At that moment, he found it alarming. Particularly with the fingers of the hand without the deadly mutant nails sticking out of it splayed out over his throat.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I ruin your expensive equipment?”

“What the hell are you doing? Get—”

“Quit your whining,” Logan growled. He pulled off his wife beater, and pressing it to the wound with his free hand. “Hold that there. Keep out of the way.” 

“What do you think I’m doing, jackass?” Tony snapped back, but by then the mutant was making his way back to the others. Frustrated, the somewhat defrocked Iron Man fired his repulsor at one of the remaining foot soldiers of whatever guy they were actually looking to pick a fight with. Some of those men were roaming around, hoping to pick them off one by one no doubt. Easily done since they were all scattered. 

Without his helmet, Tony couldn’t hear Steve getting bent out of shape about it. Unfortunately, without his helmet on, he also couldn’t do much when another shot hit him right in the shoulder. Around that time another someone whacked him upside the head. This brought him back to the present moment or at least most of the way there. 

Tony tried hard to focus on potential positive ways that this situation could resolve itself. It was sort of obvious, to him if not his captors, that he couldn’t do jack or shit without his suit. He had a GPS locator in his watch that they were too stupid to notice, but it wasn’t like he was James Bond. There wasn’t a tiny laser just hidden beneath… Goddammit, why hadn’t he thought to add something like that? How stupid could he—Okay, that wasn’t going to be very helpful.

Resting his head against the somewhat damp wall to his immediate left and closing his eyes, he tried again, thinking of smaller things. Like how annoyingly tight the ropes on his hands were. Or how much he hated being gagged. Small things like the wound, but like all of the things currently on his mind what he found himself dwelling on was fairly pessimistic. It was going to get infected.

With his eyes closed, he didn’t realize the lights had gone off until he opened them again, heard the sound of confused gunfire and then something that sounded like a ‘snikt.’ A familiar noise even though Tony had never really found himself having time to listen hard enough to the exact sound Logan’s retractable adamantium claws made.

As rescues or --as Tony would later call it-- assists went, Wolverine had done a decent enough job. Iron Man’s appreciative and admiring attitude died a quick and horrible death though when Logan crouched down in front of him and sniffed at the wound.

The most Tony could do, however, was make a muffled sound of disapproval, which only earned him a snort. Then Wolverine rose to his feet, pulling Tony up by the scruff of his neck and tugging him to the door.

“So I might have fucked up,” the Canadian freakshow murmured, making no effort to helpful with loosening Tony’s bonds. 

“Mmph.” Where the hell were the others anyway? The wound couldn’t have been that bad, but it felt horrible and he found himself leaning the wall and trailing blood from his shoulder, forehead and chest. That was all kinds of disgusting and he stopped after awhile, eying the tiny droplets pooling around him. Logan eyed him skeptically for a moment before taking one claw to the ropes around Tony’s wrists, which nearly caused Tony to pass out. In a manly way, of course. 

Tony wasn’t sure how he ended up getting carried around like some sort of injured male mail-ordered bride. It was like one second his feet were on the ground and the next they weren’t, which was probably good because everything looked a little blurry. At least he didn’t get thrown over the guy’s shoulder although it was still all kinds of awkward seeing as Wolverine hadn’t brought along an extra shirt. Tony made a fuzzy mental note to remind Jarvis to remind him to see about getting the guy a uniform. If they kept him on the team. Didn’t he have an X-men suit he could use? Why wasn’t he wearing that? Why was everyone so useless?

Wolverine eyed him curiously and Tony blinked a bit when the mutant chuckled. “Gotta say this while I can. I think I like you this way.”

The businessman gritted his teeth before and after gingerly reaching up to remove his gag. “What? Injured?”

“Quiet,” Logan countered. “Just keep on relaxing. We only have a little ways to go. I’ll be sure to hand you off to your boyfriend. Captain America, right?”

“How about you just keep your claws to yourself and put a shirt on while you’re at it,” Tony mumbled before letting himself drift off and letting his head rest against Logan’s shoulder. Fun as it could have been, he wasn’t really in the mood for snarking. 

-

Tony woke up in a hospital bed and instinctively reached to yank out the IV from his arm when he heard that snikt again. Which made his heart rate spike a little and the monitor started beeping to indicate as much. Logan laughed before the beeping started, but that wasn’t exactly surprising. Monitor or no, the mutant would have noticed anyway.

With a long-suffering sigh, Tony scowled and considered his unwelcome visitor. “Oh, come on. What are you doing here?”

The mutant stretched out in his chair letting his boots rest on the foot of Tony’s bed. He was such a country yokel. All Logan needed was a straw hat to dip over his brow and piece of straw to chew on and he’d be all set. “Everyone else went home. Figured I’d stick around and find little ways to amuse myself.”

“That’s special,” Tony muttered, lips twisting into a small scowl as he looked around the room. “They went home?”

“Well, after three weeks of crying and praying, it’s gets boring to watch someone lying around in a coma.” The claws kept popping in and out of Logan’s knuckles. It was sort of mesmerizing, but mostly it was just sort of creepy and obnoxious. 

“…I hate you.”

“In that case, I probably shouldn’t tell you that I drew all over your face in Sharpie somewhere in the middle of week two. It’s been boring as hell around here.”

Tony rubbed his temples and rummaged around until he found the button that would raise the bed. “Please be joking. Better yet, please go away.”

“I save your life and that’s the thanks I get?”

“I don’t owe you any special favors, Jethro. Put your feet down.”

Then, finally, he heard another familiar and infinitely superior sound effect heading his way. Tony had never been so grateful to see Pepper enter a room in his life. He offered her the dopiest of smiles and then frowned as he pointed to Logan. “Pepper, make him go away.”

Logan rolled his eyes, kicking Tony’s foot before moving his boots off the bed. “What are you? Two years old?”

Tony glared at him, deciding that being injured gave him the right to overreact if he felt like it. “Ow. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Pepper just sighed, glancing at both of them before setting down a tray full of hospital food in front of Tony. “Just eat this and, Tony, I can’t just kick him out. He’s been nice enough to stay with you and he carried you all the way here.”

Nice enough. Right. Tony grabbed the sleeve of her jacket, attempting to tug her closer, but she moved away before he could get a decent grip. “How long has it been? When did I get here?”

“A few hours ago,” she said somewhat soothingly, frowning as she sat down next to the bed. “You’re going to be just fine.”

“He wrecked my armor,” Tony petulantly pointed out. “He left little pieces of it all over the place and—”

There was another snikt and Tony felt vaguely pleased when Pepper flinched at the same time he did. Wolverine just raised an eyebrow and stretched as his claws slide back somewhere into his hands. “Relax, Richie Rich. I salvaged all of it and your girl took it home for you. No one’s out there making dippy suits just like yours.”

Tony looked up at Pepper. “Seriously?”

“Yes, your armor is fine and no, I’m not your girl. Now calm down and eat your jello.”

Logan took in a deep breath and regarded them both with a somewhat amused expression before standing up. “I’ll leave you to it then.”

-

After that, Tony tried taking a more vested interest in actual hand-to-hand combat as opposed to repulsor-to-woefully inadequate human flesh smack downs. He was doing just fine with the smack downs, but the other stuff? Not so much. 

He’d been hoping to get Steve to do it, but apparently there was some sort of Veterans Reunion Weekend thing. Everyone else had missions and assignments and important things to do. Everyone except for Logan, Hank, Bruce and himself. Well, and Natasha was around somewhere, but she’d be busy in no time. Tony technically had business meetings, but he didn’t really care. 

Bruce had locked himself up in the lab again and Hank was probably in there talking to ants. And Logan was working out in the gym because that was just the sort of shitty luck Tony had. 

“Can’t you do your spinning at home?”

Tony rolled his eyes and looked around. He worked out fairly regularly, but he didn’t do this whole pseudo dojo mopping the floor with friends stuff all that often. Not that Logan was a friend and he definitely didn’t plan on doing anything on the floor with him. “There are so many things wrong with that question that I don’t even know where to begin.”

Logan stopped beating the snot out of a punching bag and ventured closer to where Tony stood, still debating what to do. “You gonna some pilates? Maybe some ballet?”

It occurred to Tony that by talking he was drawing way too much attention to himself. The smart thing to do was to shut up and eventually Logan would move on to finding something else to do. Like hunting mice in a barn or whatever else he did during his copious amounts of spare time. “No. I’m going to… Do some stuff.”

“Do you need a spotter?” Logan asked, looking fairly solemn. “I hear stuff can be really hard work for a beginner.”

“You’re funny,” Tony muttered. “Really, really funny. Now go away.”

“Last time I checked this is a free gym for avenging types.”

Wolverine moved around behind him and Tony twisted around to glance over at him. “Technically free,” he pointed out. “I pay for it.”

“And it’s so very sweet of you to do that, babe, but I’m going to stick around. Besides, you can’t spar by yourself now can you?”

“You did not just call me that. I am not sparring with you.”

“Chicken.”

“I’m not chicken. You have claws.” Wow, that was a feeble excuse and since Tony didn’t have claws and seeing as he could fly sometimes, he was probably more like a chicken than anything else at the moment. 

Logan laughed. “Typical. You think I’d use them on you?”

“Uh, reality check: you have.”

“I’ve used them to save you. I’ve used them to fight alongside you. I haven’t used them on you and I wouldn’t.”

“Because?”

“Because you’re on my team, dumbass.”

Tony couldn’t think of anything to say to that. 

“Look, seeing as it’s probably your first time, I’ll go easy on you. I can’t promise not to laugh, but do you honestly think anyone could promise something like that?”

“Gee, wow, let’s do it then,” he murmured in what he thought was a very sarcastic tone. 

Maybe Logan didn’t get sarcasm or maybe Logan was just being a jerk, but five seconds later, Tony was lying flat on his back on the mat and trying to figure out just where his breath had gone off to.

“Oh god I think you broke something.”

Wolverine chuckled before crouching down beside him and hauling him back to his feet. “You know, maybe you should stick to wearing the suit all the time.”

Tony narrowed his eyes and eyed the mutant warily when Logan smiled at him in a seemingly innocent matter. “No thanks.”

“Why not? You can get if off easily.”

“You would know seeing as you’re a human can opener—Agh.” And there he was back on his back again. “You call this going easy on me?”

Logan lightly nudged his side with one foot. “Anytime you feel like maybe putting up some kind of a fight here, let me know.”

“I don’t like this. It’s not fun and my back hurts and it’s difficult. And don’t launch into some clichéd tirade about how rich guys don’t like to work and they’re lazy with soft creamy-smooth hands.”

The mutant raised an eyebrow. “Uh huh.”

“Because that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Hate to break this to you, Stark, but you gotta be the world’s worst telepath. Now get up and come at me like you mean it. Get angry.”

 

“I’m going to end up with my jaw wired shut.”

“I should be so lucky.”

Tony made more of an effort with virtually the same result time after time. He managed to land one punch, and that was about the same time he decided he was giving up. Eventually, he just lay there on the mat, winded and refusing to get back up. Logan sat down on the mat next to him before taking one of his hands and inspecting it. “Seems sort of callused to me.”

“Wha?”

“Your lazy, soft, creamy-smooth hand’s got calluses.”

Okay. Tony tried to pay very little attention to the fact that Logan was sniffing his digits and… Oh god, he was licking his hand. Logan was licking his hand and if anything, Tony thought he kind of liked it. “The ceiling in here is disgusting,” Tony managed to say, trying to find a way to change the subject. “Can, uh, I have my hand back now?”

He got his hand back pretty quickly but at about the same time Logan was straddling his waist. The warm, hard weight of the mutant on top of him was actually sort of pleasant even if he was a little dismayed to find that Logan had hardly broken a sweat. He squirmed a bit when the Canadian started biting and licking his earlobe because honestly he hadn’t been expecting that.

Tony figured fair was fair so he inspected one of Logan’s hands, considering the knuckles and trying not to worry about the whole claw thing while Logan continued nibbling on his neck. It was sort of tricky to relax, but he didn’t have much time to dwell that before Logan was kissing him properly. And then he was kissing Logan. And there was some tongue. Then there was a lot of biting, specifically Logan biting him again. This time on the neck, throat, shoulder, collarbone and jaw. 

“You wanna fight some more?” the mutant asked after awhile in a low, amused growl. 

Not a satisfied one, but then Tony would have hardly expected some bites and one kiss to satisfy most people let alone Logan. He tried to free his wrists from the other man’s grip briefly before sighing. “I think we’ve sort of established I suck at this fighting stuff when I’m not in my suit.”

“You’re a dismal failure at stuff when it comes to a fair fight, but,” Logan drawled, “that wasn’t the sort of fight I had in mind.”

Tony considered this and sighed a bit when Logan started biting him again. “Lucky me, I guess.”

“Lucky you.”

Being passive was sort of pathetic, but it was hard to do much of anything with Wolverine on top of him. Tony sort of figured he’d have to get used to that to some degree. Just the same, he wanted to do more than get a lot of bites. When the mutant started slipping a few fingers in under the waistband of his pants, Tony lightly moved his hand away. He told himself it had nothing to do with Logan’s special mutant features, but he wasn’t sure if it did or didn’t. Either way, he kept a hold of Logan’s hand, and tried to figure out his next move before Wolverine got restless. 

Creepy claws or not, Tony didn’t think he wanted to pass this sort of thing up. It was sort of like swimming in a river full of piranhas, but more fun. And hadn’t he always sort of wanted to do that anyway? Of course he had. And compared to piranhas this wouldn’t be that bad. It wasn’t like Logan had the same lack of control over his claws as Bruce did the Hulk. He wasn’t going to end up skewered or worse even if his imagination continued to come up with horrifyingly awful end results. Especially since the reality consisted mainly of Logan starting to make a face that seemed to be a cross between furious and rejected. 

Tony hated when he himself made faces like that. As a result, he hated looking up at a face on the verge of looking like that, so Tony decided he would just try to savor the whole Wolverine experience. “Just FYI, I’m pretty good at other activities that aren’t stuff or fighting. I could show you. ”

Logan’s hands stilled and he sat back on his haunches for a second, considering him. Tony tried not to look too hopeful. Eventually, the mutant moved back slowly, rising to his feet and taking Tony with him. Being shoved up against a wall wasn’t exactly light years better than shoved down onto a mat, but it didn’t seem like Wolverine believed in a lot of personal space or being less than completely in control. In a way, Tony didn’t even think that was very surprising. He lacked the time and interest to honestly think of it as a bad thing, so he just kissed Logan, offering suitably pleased sounds when the biting resumed. 

“All right,” Logan muttered, the words just a few seconds shy of being absolutely irrelevant and pointless, “show me.”

The attention being paid to him became fiercer and he worked to match it, but it was fairly easy to follow Logan’s lead. Seemed to be what the mutant wanted too, and once one of the mutant’s hands finally got a chance to wrap itself around him, Tony couldn’t actually think of anything worth complaining about. When the rough stroking started and continued at a regular, steady rhythm, Tony parted his lips obediently and tugged the other man closer, tolerating bite after bite because each one actually felt pretty damn good. 

Even when the wall moved behind him to in front of him, he was pretty content with the whole arrangement. Sort of. Except for the part where they were in the gym, and anyone could get bored enough to wonder in.

He thought he was doing a pretty good job of not worrying about Logan’s internal knife set, but he startled to tense a bit when Logan’s hand moved off of him. He tried looking over his shoulder, but Logan gently tilted his head back to the wall and chuckled. Then Tony also tried to do anything with his hands only to have them placed back up against the wall time and time again. He must have looked a little petulant even without facing the mutant because eventually Logan laughed again. 

“Relax, will you?” Logan murmured before biting his way down to from Tony’s neck to his shoulder. 

Tony sighed, letting his forehead rest against the wallpaper. He didn’t like it. The color was lousy. “I honestly could…” He tensed as fingers on one of Logan’s hands settled on his waist with two slicked up digits on the other entered him. “Fuck.” 

He could practically hear the mutant smirking as the fingers probed deeper before they were joined by a third. “You got a decent reputation. I’m sure you can handle sex.” 

Despite having no real experience with paranoia, Tony found that even as he found himself calming down and eagerly looking forward to the fingers being replaced by something more satisfying, his thoughts kept drifting back to Logan’s special problem. “Just…don’t…”

Logan just nuzzled the back of his neck before moving down his back with his teeth and tongue. “Don’t worry about that. I have a lot of self-control. I won’t hurt ya.” There was a pause. “Well. Not in the way you seem to think I will, darlin’.”

Tony snorted before moaning as the fingers moved further in before slowly being withdrawn. “Oh shut up.”

“You first,” Wolverine teased, moving both sets of hands up Tony’s chest as he entered him. 

If they did this again, Tony was determined to get to do more with his hands, but for the time being he just moved in time with each of Logan’s thrusts. Wasn’t like he had a lot of options anyway, or that he felt really all that put out by it. 

-

By the time they were done, Tony felt like every inch of skin had bites on it except maybe the soles of his feet. Logan looked about ready to go at it a third, fourth, or probably an eighth time. He sort of hated him for having that much stamina.

Eventually they ended up back on the mat, Logan’s head resting on one of his thighs and Tony carding a few fingers through his hair before glancing around the room. “We have to do something about the mess.”

He hadn’t really been thinking of going that far, but when he tried to sit up, Logan sharply tugged on him until he was willing to lay back down. The insistent pulling didn’t hurt at all. The fact that it could have was a little unsettling. “In a bit, Stark. Hire a cleaning crew if you’re so worried.”

“Someone might—”

“Hank and Bruce went home an hour ago. You got a few phone calls assuming your ring tone sounds like the old Batman theme song. No one else has wandered in or out of the building.”

“…Uh, it’s kinda weird that you know all that.”

“Heightened senses, darlin’.”

“And another thing, don’t call me that. Ever again.”

“I get that you all think I’m brain-dead, _darlin’_ , but I’m actually very bright,” Logan pointed out before grinning. He propped himself up on an elbow, letting his fingers wander over Tony’s side. “I can speak eight languages fluently. I can get by just fine in five others. Might not be as rich as you, but I’m not an idiot.”

Tony opened his mouth to point out that even then it wasn’t like Logan was actually a certified genius when he realized that was sort of petty. Sort of dumb too since he didn’t know all the reasons why Logan couldn’t or wouldn’t or hadn’t done much with his life in terms of higher education or anything like that. 

“Most people aren’t as rich,” he muttered after awhile, rolling onto his side and yawning, blinking down at the other man. “Are you any good at chess?”

“You’d be surprised.”

“We should play. I’m sick of Reed beating me.”

Logan tapped his fingers against the inside of Tony’s knee and smirked up at him. “What do I get if I win?”

“Hmm. Same thing you’ll get if I win.”

Instead of asking what that was, the mutant just swatted at Tony’s ass before sitting up. “Sounds like playing with you could be fun.”

The annoying part was when Tony tried to copy that motion, Logan just pushed him down onto his back again and crawled up until he was on top of him. Terrific. Clearly he was taking up with a caveman. Tony didn’t care much, but he was willing to bet Pepper would.

**Author's Note:**

> While Tony is very much like movie!Tony somewhere further along in a time-line where the Avengers are more fully in swing, Logan is very much a combination of what I like about movie!Logan and what I know about him from comics.


End file.
